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Google self-driving car strikes bus on California street

By JUSTIN PRITCHARD
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A self-driving car being tested by Google struck a
public bus on a Silicon Valley street, a fender-bender that appears to be
the first time one of the tech company's vehicles caused a crash during
testing.

Google accepted at least some responsibility for the collision, which
occurred on Valentine's Day when one of the Lexus SUVs it has outfitted
with sensors and cameras hit the side of the bus near the company's
headquarters in Mountain View, California.

No one was injured, according to an accident report Google wrote and
submitted to the California Department of Motor Vehicles. It was posted
online Monday.

According to the report, Google's car intended to turn right off a major
boulevard when it detected sandbags around a storm drain at the
intersection.

The right lane was wide enough to let some cars turn and others go
straight, but the Lexus needed to slide to its left within the right lane
to get around the obstruction.

The Lexus was going 2 mph when it made the move and its left front struck
the right side of the bus, which was going straight at 15 mph.

The car's test driver - who under state law must be in the front seat to
grab the wheel when needed - thought the bus would yield and did not have
control before the collision, Google said.

While the report does not address fault, Google said in a written
statement, "We clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn't
moved there would't have been a collision."

Chris Urmson, the head of Google's self-driving car project, said in a
brief interview that he believes the Lexus was moving before the bus
started to pass.

"We saw the bus, we tracked the bus, we thought the bus was going to slow
down, we started to pull out, there was some momentum involved," Urmson
told The Associated Press.

He acknowledged that Google's car did have some responsibility but said it
was "not black and white."

The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority said none of the 15
passengers or the driver of the bus was injured.

The transit agency is reviewing the incident and hasn't reached any
conclusions about liability, spokeswoman Stacey Hendler Ross said in a
written statement.

There may never be a legal decision on fault, especially if damage was
negligible - as both sides indicated it was - and neither Google nor the
transit authority pushes the case.

Still, the collision could be the first time a Google car in autonomous
mode caused a crash.

Google cars have been involved in nearly a dozen collisions in or around
Mountain View since starting to test on city streets in the spring of
2014. In most cases, Google's cars were rear-ended. No one has been
seriously injured.

Google's written statement called the Feb. 14 collision "a classic example
of the negotiation that's a normal part of driving - we're all trying to
predict each other's movements."

Google said its computers have reviewed the incident and engineers changed
the software that governs the cars to understand that buses may not be as
inclined to yield as other vehicles.

Jessica Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for California's DMV, which regulates
Google's testing of about two dozen Lexus SUVs in the state, said agency
officials spoke Monday with Google but would have no comment. Under state
law, Google must retain data from the moments before and after any
collision.

"As far as he-said she-said, there shouldn't be any of that. It's all
there," said Robert W. Peterson, an insurance law expert at Santa Clara
University who has studied self-driving cars.

A critic of Google's self-driving car efforts said the collision shows the
tech giant should be kept from taking onto public streets self-driving
prototypes it built without a steering wheel or pedals.

Google sees that as the next natural step for the technology, and has
pressed California's DMV and federal regulators to authorize cars in which
humans have limited means of intervening.

"Clearly Google's robot cars can't reliably cope with everyday driving
situations," said John M. Simpson of the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog.
"There needs to be a licensed driver who can takeover, even if in this
case the test driver failed to step in as he should have."

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This story has been corrected to show that Google began testing on city
streets in 2014, not 2015.